Lifeboat Foundation

When stars like our Sun run out of fuel, they contract to form white dwarfs. Such dead stars can sometimes flare back to life in a super-hot explosion and produce a fireball of X-ray radiation. A research team from several German institutes including Tübingen University and led by Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has now observed such an explosion of X-ray light for the very first time.

“It was to some extent a fortunate coincidence, really,” explains Ole König from the Astronomical Institute at FAU in the Dr. Karl Remeis observatory in Bamberg, who has published an article about this observation in the reputable journal Nature, together with Prof. Dr. Jörn Wilms and a research team from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, the University of Tübingen, the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, and the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam. “These X-ray flashes last only a few hours and are almost impossible to predict, but the observational instrument must be pointed directly at the explosion at exactly the right time,” explains the astrophysicist.

“These so-called novae do happen all the time but detecting them during the very first moments when most of the X-ray emission is produced is really hard.” —

Gene editing reverses brain genetic reprogramming caused by adolescent binge drinking.

Gene editing may be a potential treatment for anxiety and alcohol use disorder in adults who were exposed to binge drinking in their adolescence, according to the findings of an animal study published on May 4, 2022, in the journal Science Advances.

The study was issued by researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) who have been studying the effects of early-life binge drinking on health later in life.

Scientists have proposed a solar energy-driven photocatalytic method to split water. This method uses iridium as a metal catalyst and is believed to be capable of producing green and clean hydrogen fuel on a large scale.

For those of us worried the world somehow got trapped in the wrong timeline, relax — scientists are now saying there might actually be two realities.

Two researchers from the University of Maryland released their findings in a study earlier this month in the journal Physical Review Research. According to a university press release, though, a second reality isn’t exactly what they set out to find. While studying layers of graphene, made with hexagons of carbon, the found repeating patterns that changed the way electricity moves.

Based on their research, the pair think they accidentally found a clue that could explain some of our current reality’s mysteries. According to the university’s media arm, they realized that experiments on the electrical properties of stacked sheets of graphene produced results that looked like little universes and that the underlying causes could apply to other areas of physics. In stacks of graphene, electricity changes behavior when two sheets interact, so the two hypothesize that unique physics could similarly emerge from interacting layers elsewhere—perhaps across the entire universe.

Today a state-of-the-art solar panel on Earth can convert between 20 to 30% of the energy it collects from sunlight into electricity. At night solar panels here contribute nothing. But in space with nothing to block the Sun, that same Earth-based solar panel becomes thirteen times more efficient. And that is enough of an incentive to consider solar power from space.

The Chinese and UK models are massive arrays located in geosynchronous orbit while continuously beaming energy to receiving stations here on Earth.

The US model is different using a constellation of solar power generating satellites. These would be in relatively low orbits and interconnected to form a mesh network. The total network would generate continuous energy beaming it to the surface even when a portion of it gets blocked when the satellites enter the night side of the planet.

Continue reading “Is Solar Energy from Outer Space in Our Future? — Part One: Building a Geosynchronous Solar Power Plant” »

Machine intelligence and artificial intelligence. How it may impact the future of humanity — A discussion with award winning science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer.

The exponential growth in computing powers, machine intelligence and artificial intelligence suggests that within a few decades intelligent machines will have more capability than us. How will they interact with humanity and what are the risks?

Continue reading “Machine Intelligence — A conversation with Robert J. Sawyer, the award winning sci-fi author” »

As the world rapidly shifts to EV transport, the automotive industry is experiencing some major teething issues. The global charging network is having to keep pace with more and more EVs on the road, and as manufacturers expand their networks, cracks are starting to appear in their grand schemes. We recently reported that a long string of EV chargers outside of Moscow were hacked by Ukrainian programmers to display anti-war and anti-Putin messaging, and there have even been cases in the UK where charging station displays showed graphic images. Hacking EV infrastructure is becoming more commonplace, and it could be a bigger issue than many might think.

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We believe Mars may once have had oceans and sky, but lost them from a lack of a magnetosphere. How does this happen, and how can we create a magnetosphere for Mars so we can terraform and live on it?

International Space Development Conference Registration: https://isdc2022.nss.org.
Martian Magnetosphere paper by R.A. Bamford: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.06887
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Continue reading “Making a Magnetosphere for Mars” »

Scientists in France have partially restored the eyesight of a blind man using gene therapy – now, he is able to identify blurry shapes.